Wright Air Service Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to Anaktuvuk Pass Airport (AKP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC16LA012
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N540ME
- Operator
- Wright Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo Anaktuvuk Pass Airport (AKP), ANAKTUVUK PASS, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 1996)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a scheduled passenger flight in an area of remote, snow-covered, mountainous terrain with seven passengers on board. The pilot reported that, after receiving a weather briefing, he chose to conduct the flight under visual flight rules (VFR). While en route about 10,000 ft mean sea level (msl), the visibility began "getting fuzzy." The pilot then descended the airplane to 2,500 ft msl (500 ft above ground level) to fly along a river. When the airplane was about 10 miles southwest of the airport, he climbed the airplane to about 3,000 ft msl in order to conduct a straight-in approach to the runway. He added that the visibility was again a little "fuzzy" due to snow and clouds, and that he never saw the airport. The pilot also noted that the flat light conditions limited his ability to determine his distance from the surrounding mountainous, snow-covered terrain. Shortly after climbing to 3,000 ft msl, the airplane collided with the rising terrain about 6 miles southwest of the airport. Another pilot, who had just departed from the airport, confirmed that flat light and low-visibility conditions existed in the area at the time of the accident. Further, camera images of the weather conditions recorded at the airport showed that, although conditions were marginal VFR at the surface at the time of the accident, there was mountain obscuration and reduced visibility due to light snow and clouds along the accident flight path and that the worst conditions were located along and near the higher terrain.
The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that that the pilot encountered flat light and low-visibility conditions as he neared the airport at 3,000 ft msl while operating under VFR and that he did not see the rising, snow-covered mountainous terrain and subsequently failed to maintain clearance from it.
Probable cause
The pilot’s continued flight into deteriorating, flat light weather conditions, which resulted in impact with mountainous, snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC16LA012
- Event ID
- 20160104X11840
- Case number
- ANC16LA012
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8a012a295f4e32f8973a561bdc20859ef5ee3e2b9b4334f7a41191bf852d5627; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:03:54.690Z.